Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
also has similarities to Rasmussen's rule-based behavior: if situation A, then do X; if
situation B, then do Y; and so forth.
In RPD there are three different decision situations.
1. The first situation is as described above, where operators recognize a situation and act
like they have acted before.
2. Sometimes the situation may be a little different from past situations, and the operator
will then go though a mental simulation of what could happen if he decided to act
according to the familiar pattern. Only then may he decide to accept the common
routine action.
3. An operator simulates the action again, but decides that a routine action is no longer
appropriate.
One important distinction of RPD is that decision makers do not go through all possible
alternatives before they make a decision. They use reliable heuristics (in this case for fire
fighting) and in most cases they are correct. The model has therefore features of both
Simon's satisficizing criteria (1969) and Rasmussen's decision ladder in Figure 5.4.
MICRO-COGNITION AND MACRO-COGNITION
In a development of RPD, Klein (1994) made a distinction between micro-cognition and
macro-cognition. Micro-cognition is typical for cognition in an experimental situation in
a psychology lab: puzzle solving, searching a problem space, selective attention,
choosing between options, and estimating uncertainty values.
Many studies have been performed on puzzle solving (also called crypt-arithmetic
problems) to understand what kinds of strategies people use to arrive quickly at a result.
One example of such a problem is this:
DONALD+GERALD=ROBERT; solve for
D=
2
From these studies we can learn quite a bit about strategies for problem solving and
cognition, and we can learn how to set up quantitative predictive models of cognition
(such as goals, operators, methods, and selection [GOMS]; see Chapter 7), but the results
are difficult to apply to real-world problem solving. This is not to say that quantitative
models are useless. GOMS has been used for design of certain consumer products, such
as keyboards and calculators (Card, Moran, and Newell, 1980).
Macro-cognition is typical of real life situations, such as planning and replanning,
problem detection, building courses of action, attention management, recognizing
situations, and managing uncertainty. These types of problems are difficult to model
quantitatively, and the analysis is qualitative.
5.11
SITUATION AWARENESS
In order to function well, people must have an accurate picture of the situation they are in
and how it is evolving. For example, a car driver must be aware of the surrounding
traffic. A driver with situation awareness will foresee that some children playing next to
the street are about to run out into the street to catch a ball.
